A new poll shows the province growing more disenchanted with the ruling Liberals and voter support moving strongly to the other two parties.

A Forum Research poll released over the weekend has both the NDP and the PCs gaining from the growing unhappiness with Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath wasn’t in any danger of being replaced anyway. But her improving position in the polls will cement her position as a potential premier-in-waiting heading into the 2018 election.

The depth of Ontario’s disappointment with Wynne is revealed in how the Progressive Conservatives are faring. They were summarily rejected by voters in last year’s election and don’t even have a leader right now. They pick a new one in May.

But even leaderless, the Tories are five points ahead of the Liberals in the poll of 881 adults of voting age. It put the Liberals at 29 per cent and the NDP at 27 per cent, with the Tories at 34 per cent support.

Theoretically. In an age when many voters can’t be reached by pollsters because they don’t have land lines, and half don’t even vote, most polls must be taken with a tonne of salt.

This is especially true of the polls taken between elections, when many voters aren’t paying attention. And it’s doubly true of polls commissioned by friends of whomever comes out looking best in the poll.

I’m not suggesting this was one of those polls. But I don’t trust it any more than those which predict Justin Trudeau will beat Prime Minister Stephen Harper this fall. Plenty of people talk big to pollsters but stay home on election night.

The Forum poll found a wide change in attitude when voters were asked how they liked Tories running the province under the three party leadership candidates: Oshawa MPP Christine Elliott came out far ahead, with the support of 51 per cent of the party’s members.

The party did less well in the poll with Barrie-area MP Patrick Brown as leader, or southern Ontario MPP Monte McNaughton. Voters in general are split almost evenly between the PCs, Liberals and NDP under the scenarios of either of those two as PC leader.

Elliott soared over both with 36 per cent, according to the poll. Maybe; but Toronto and its media seem to be very determined to make sure that the “centrist” wins the leadership rather than the more right-leaning McNaughton or Brown.

It seems clear, however, that a majority of Ontario voters would prefer Anybody-But-The-Liberals to be running the province these days, rather than the party actually chosen for the job last year.

Why? Scandals, some say. Possible criminal bribery in the Sudbury byelection, billion-dollar gas plant boondoggle, police investigations, etc. etc. With the exception of the byelection, most of the scandals were already known when Ontario went to the polls the last time, and it got the perpetrators re-elected anyway.

Is it Ontario’s spiralling debt that’s putting people on edge? It was on track to hit $310 billion this month, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk reported in December. Most of that was already in place before the last election, too.

The AG’s report got less attention than it deserved, especially the part where she warns that when infrastructure borrowing is added to the official annual deficit of about $12 billion, Ontario has been going into the hole by between $14 billion and $24 billion per year under the Liberals just since 2009.

Clearly that’s unsustainable, and even the dimmest of voters must know severe pain will be required to fix it.

Maybe that’s what’s behind Wynne’s bad poll numbers – the growing sense of dread among voters that while the rest of North America seems to be enjoying some kind of economic recovery, Ontario’s worst economic pain lies ahead.

We’re still treading water, delaying the inevitable cuts and tax increases under a premier who doesn’t seem to know what to do outside of announcing evermore lavish social programs we can no longer afford. (Another $587 million for the homeless on Monday; just charge it to your grandchildren.)

Ontario’s deteriorating fiscal state is obviously a festering problem. Alberta’s new premier just took on that province’s deficit in a new budget that will hurt, but will put them back in balance. Even Quebec has finally realized it has to face the music and taken steps to get to balance.

Will Wynne ever make any of the cuts that are so badly needed? Or will she just postpone the inevitable pain yet again to avoid ruining the autumn election chances of her federal counterpart Trudeau?

No matter what she does, Wynne’s best polling days are likely in her rear-view mirror as the fiscal crunch closes in on her government and the people of Ontario. It may be up to another woman to fix her mess.

Find Windsor Star on Facebook]]>http://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/vander-doelen-liberals-sag-in-polls/feed0A Forum Research poll released over the weekend has both the NDP and the PCs gaining from the growing unhappiness with Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, columnist Chris Vander Doelen writes. (CHRIS YOUNG/The Canadian Press)winstarvanderdoelenAndrew Coyne: Party that wins federal election could be squeezed out of governmenthttp://www.windsorstar.com/story.html?id=10926649
http://www.windsorstar.com/story.html?id=10926649#commentsSat, 28 Mar 2015 00:34:16 +0000http://blogs.windsorstar.com/?p=459644]]>Find Windsor Star on Facebook]]>http://www.windsorstar.com/story.html?id=10926649/feed0Governor General David Johnston, left, may have some serious work ahead of him immediately following this year's federal election.postmedianewswsChris Vander Doelen: Campaign expense gaps revealedhttp://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/vander-doelen-campaign-expense-gaps-revealed
http://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/vander-doelen-campaign-expense-gaps-revealed#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 21:54:46 +0000http://blogs.windsorstar.com/?p=459429]]>Some intriguing details – and gaps – are revealed by the 70 candidates for Windsor city council who filed their 2014 election expenses by the deadline Friday.

There are campaign signs that aren’t accounted for, potentially ineligible donors, missing expenses – and lots and lots of multiple donors trying to influence the outcome of the election. With little success, it seems.

Outside of the mayoral contest, which I won’t cover here today, the most bitter fight was in Ward 3, where former councillor Caroline Postma was up against Rino Bortolin. With a lot of Liberal party help he beat super-aggressive campaigner Gabe Maggio.

Postma was very vocal about what she called “dirty tricks” being pulled against herself and others during the campaign, and some evidence of that surfaces in the expense filings.

Of the two low-profile candidates in the ward, one, Claude Reno, barely campaigned. He was accused by several other campaigns of being a decoy on the ballot intended to confuse supporters of the much-better-known Rino, who runs a restaurant under his first name.

Claude Reno’s financial statement lends credence to the accusation he was less than a committed candidate: he spent only $236, $100 of which was his filing fee. He claims to have also spent $129 to print a flyer few people saw. The last $7 went for bank fees.

If Reno’s presence in the race was a dirty trick modelled on a similar U.S. ploy pulled in the 2013 Detroit mayoral race – a barber named Mike Dugeon ran in the primaries against frontrunner and eventual winner Mike Duggan – well, it didn’t work.

Unions played a major role in the election, according to the financial statements. But they didn’t determine any outcomes that I can see. The names CUPE, Unifor, LIUNA and the Windsor firefighters union are all over the filings. The IBEW is in there too, listed only as “Local 773.”

The unions backed some of the winners, but more of the losers, it seems. They often gave the $750 donation limit.

Ditto with the local businesses and business people whose names turn up over and over in the filings, such as restaurant owner and political activist Mark Boscariol, and Terry Rafih and his Overseas Motors. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to who they backed and who won or lost.

Defeated councillor Al Maghnieh’s statement is interesting. It says he spent $9,282 in total, $5,300 of which he covered himself out of his own pocket — after declaring bankruptcy.

In Ward 8, Coun. Bill Marra faced only a single opponent but spent $9,525 anyway, only $300 of it his own money. (For clarity and simplicity, I’ve left the pennies out of all the figures in this column).

Coun. Jo-Anne Gignac, once again, covered every penny of the $11,531 she says she spent out of her own pocket. Gignac could easily raise her spending limit of $19,805. But she says she prefers not to be beholden to donors. If only more candidates shared that ethic.

The weirdest expense I found was in John Elliott’s filing for Ward 2. The new councillor for that ward lists a $720 expense as “Windsor Express Basketball Game Campaign Team Event.” The team doesn’t even play in his ward.

The “team event” cost more than the $663 Elliott spent on food, the $296 he spent on gasoline, and more than a third of the paltry $1,951 he spent on signs. But hey, if basketball helped him get elected, more power to him.

Ward 5 candidate John Middleton listed no expenses other than the $100 filing fee, even though he towed a campaign sign all over town while losing to re-elected Coun. Ed Sleiman.

Campaign materials such as signs cannot be claimed as free, even if the candidate produces them himself (Middleton owns a sign company) or has them left over from a previous campaign. They must be listed as a donation in kind, according to section 3 of the Ontario Municipal Elections Act.

Ward 1 candidate Matthew Ford openly challenges the Elections Act in his filing, refusing to reveal the value of signs from his last campaign. “If you want my list then REWORD,” he orders the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. That could get him in hot water.

Paul Synott, a professional manager who had a hand in a half dozen of the 2014 Windsor council campaigns, said he intends to file several complaints, starting with a donation listed on Maggio’s statement: $500 from a U.S. Citizen. The currency is not identified.

“I’m going to file a complaint about that – that’s illegal,” Synott said Friday. “All donors must be Canadian citizens.”

Find Windsor Star on Facebook]]>http://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/vander-doelen-campaign-expense-gaps-revealed/feed00328 gignacwinstarvanderdoelenMichael Den Tandt: Stephen Harper shuns the progressive conservatism of his political herohttp://www.windsorstar.com/news/national/Michael+Tandt+Harper+shuns+progressive+conservatism/10922959/story.html
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/national/Michael+Tandt+Harper+shuns+progressive+conservatism/10922959/story.html#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 02:44:20 +0000http://blogs.windsorstar.com/?p=459202]]>Find Windsor Star on Facebook]]>http://www.windsorstar.com/news/national/Michael+Tandt+Harper+shuns+progressive+conservatism/10922959/story.html/feed1Prime Minister Stephen Harper is preternaturally fond of the legacy of John G. Diefenbaker, or seems to be, Michael Den Tandt writes.postmedianewswsAnne Jarvis: Money flying out the doorhttp://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/jarvis-money-flying-out-the-door
http://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/jarvis-money-flying-out-the-door#commentsThu, 26 Mar 2015 22:56:59 +0000http://blogs.windsorstar.com/?p=458827]]>Enrolment in schools in Ontario has declined 1.3 per cent since 2003. Yet government spending on schools has soared 56 per cent, including the massive investment in full-day kindergarten.

We pay for four different types of school boards. The two main boards in Windsor, public and Catholic, each spend more than $8 million a year on administration — though the public board has almost twice as many students as the Catholic board.

We will soon have four French schools, either French immersion or full French, in Tecumseh. We may end up with three International Baccalaureate schools. We’ll have four hockey schools. The French Catholic board has so much money it’s building a $1.4-million professional dance studio at Lajeunesse. They’re all competing for a dwindling number of students.

Teachers’ salaries catapulted 25 per cent in 10 years, including 12 per cent during the recession, until they were finally frozen two years ago.

Is Windsor West MPP Lisa Gretzky, the NDP’s education critic and former longtime public school trustee who should know better, really, claiming that Ontario underfunds education?

In her first major act since being appointed critic, Gretzky, who cited her experience as a trustee when she was appointed, went up against Premier Kathleen Wynne in the legislature Tuesday over possible cuts to schools. Her point? The stock line: “The education system has been chronically underfunded,” she says.

If we expect students to think critically, shouldn’t we expect the same from the education critic?

I look at education and I see money flying out the door — with sometimes very questionable results. Enrolment across Ontario is expected to decline again next year, but government spending will rise again — albeit only slightly, for a change.

“Not only have we increased funding,” Wynne told the legislature Tuesday, “but we’ve actually increased per pupil funding when there are fewer students in the system.”

The real question should be, why have we been spending more money when we have fewer students?

There have been demographic “shifts,” Gretzky agreed in an interview. But she continued to insist “the largest portion of the problem is underfunding education.”

“Premier … because of Liberal waste and scandal and because of chronic underfunding of education, you’ve forced trustees to close schools,” she told Wynne.

It’s true the government is forcing boards to close schools. But it has nothing to do with the Liberals’ prodigious waste and scandal and everything to do with fewer students. Period. The Catholic school board is projected to lose 666 students next year, according to the government. So it will lose $6.5 million in government funding. It already has more than 3,100 empty spaces — the equivalent of eight elementary schools. It will cost $2.1 million to maintain those spaces this year. The board projects it will lose another 6,620 students in the next 15 years.

Should we pay for those empty spaces, teaching phantom students?

“Under the Education Act,” Gretzky continued in the legislature, “the minister has a responsibility to close the gaps in student achievement, but Liberal cuts to education will only make those gaps grow even wider.”

Students at the public school board here, where Gretzky was a trustee for eight years and vice-chair, have scored below the Ontario average on most provincewide tests in reading, writing and math most years. Will more money raise our students’ test scores? The Catholic board’s budget has been going down. Its students’ scores have been going up.

Research is clear: Spending a lot of money on education doesn’t necessarily produce students who achieve. The countries with the best schools spend far less than other countries.

How will the Catholic board deal with the cut to its budget next year? It will scrimp on school budgets and supplies among other measures, superintendent of corporate services Mario Iatonna told The Star’s Dave Waddell. So while everyone in education — the myriad boards, their directors, the teachers’ unions — protects their empires, the Catholic board will count pencils to save money. Ontario spends more money on education than anything else except health care, and the province has a $12.5-billion deficit. Yet no one in education thinks this should have anything to do with them.

The government’s cuts “fly in the face of its responsibility to students,” Gretzky railed in the legislature.

What flies in the face of responsibility is studiously ignoring opportunities for real reform that would both improve student achievement and be accountable to the taxpayers who pay for it.

Babies caught in doors, riders knocked to the floor or breaking bones as they’re dumped on curbs, shouting matches, surly drivers who “hate their jobs.”

Are they really that bad? Not in my experience, and I am a more than occasional user of Transit Windsor.

It was a horrible service when I moved here decades ago and discovered you could walk downtown from Tecumseh Road faster than a bus would show up. So why bother waiting?

But that wasn’t the fault of drivers. The buses were also nearly all rattling crapwagons back then, having been nearly beaten to pieces on our broken roads in the early 1980s.

But the Transit Windsor of today is light years ahead of the limited service we lived with in the bad old days. Complaints aside, it is rapidly becoming something the city should be proud of. A lot more buses (112) on much improved schedules on far better roads – although the traffic is arguably more dangerous these days.

I thought that early last month, when Windsor was still trying to dig itself out from the biggest snowfall of the season. I was taking a Transway 1C bus back to an east-end dealership to pick up a car after servicing. I remember being particularly impressed by the courtesy of the driver that day.

“Up here, ma’am, so you don’t have to step in the snow,” he kept calling out to passengers at the back of the bus trying to disembark from the rear doors. They were stepping out onto icy snowbanks which were towering by Windsor standards. “Sir? Up here please. It’s safer to get off up here.”

He was bending over backwards to be polite, and he didn’t have to. OK, maybe he did. Maybe Transit Windsor management ordered drivers to do everything possible that week to prevent falls that would cost taxpayers more lawsuits. Either way: excellent.

But in my experience over hundreds of rides on half the routes in the city over the past few years, Transit Windsor drivers have been uniformly professional. Not always Johnny Sunshine, but who is every day?

The people at the dealership thought it weird that I would take a bus to Tecumseh Mall rather than let their shuttle service pick me up downtown. But as a daily transit rider for 10 years of my youth, I’m used to it, and it was simply more convenient.

Which is why I regularly take the Tunnel Bus instead of paying to park in downtown Detroit, and why the wife and I sometimes share a car into Windsor and I take the Transway 1A, Dominion 5, the Crosstown 2, or the Ottawa 4 where I need to go.

There isn’t any higher praise for a transit service than using it when you have a car at home and don’t have to. That, and being able to count on it being on schedule.

So there are now more than 1,100 official complaints in 2013? Not bad for a system that carries more than six million riders annually, in a city with a famously entitled frame of mind, where more than a few people feel they are above the rules of common sense.

There are undoubtedly two sides to the rising complaints about Transit Windsor: on the one hand you have the members of the powerful Amalgamated Transit Union. It is extremely difficult to remove a driver for rudeness, no matter how many complaints one or two bad apples might rack up. Every workplace has them.

But on the other hand they’re dealing with mobs of rowdy high school kids, cranks, people who don’t speak the language, many more with mental health issues – and those who think the bus driver is either their personal taxi driver or a helpless target for abuse who aren’t allowed to talk back.

Imagine handling all that while there’s a problem at home. Hell, I’d be exchanging a few choice words with the complainers, too, and counting on the union to have my back.

I think the majority of the non-injury complaints are clashes of people with attitudes, and neither side is ever going to change. The union will never stop defending its members, even the ones who are wrong. Nor should they stop.

And complaints will continue to rise the busier and bigger the system gets, because the entitled sense of problem riders isn’t going to improve, either. As for the driving public of Windsor, we know they’re never going to change.

It’s difficult enough trying to evade the crazy stunts other drivers pull when you’re piloting a personal vehicle. Imagine trying to make the same evasive manoeuvres with 20 tonnes of moving bus and standing passengers aboard and it’s a miracle the mishaps haven’t been worse.

“I just don’t want to get into a situation where we’re eating our own,” Mayor Drew Dilkens told me in February, a month after all this started. “We don’t have time for that.”

Yet here we are, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. And there’s no end in sight. Council is supposed to debate a motion in April essentially forcing CEO Sandra Pupatello to choose between her job at the corporation and her other job at PricewaterhouseCoopers and two board appointments.

What started as legitimate questions about what the corporation is doing to attract jobs and how successful it has been has degenerated into a categorical mess. The back-and-forth, lining up supporters, front page stories — is this really the image we want to project when we’re trying to lure companies and investors here? Do we really want the organization tasked with attracting jobs to a city where 9.6 per cent of people are unemployed reduced to a sideshow?

People are already asking, has another economic development CEO in Windsor spun out through the revolving door? What is that — No. 11 in the last decade?

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Pupatello put up lots of numbers, graphics and photos in a 37-page slide show for council on Monday. Many councillors called the presentation detailed and comprehensive. It should have been; it was her second attempt. She seemed to blow off council in January. Three councillors asked her for “clear performance metrics” then. She never answered. She barely survived a stunning 6-5 vote to withhold half of the city’s contribution to the corporation until she better quantified its results. Even Dilkens voted for it. She was told to do her homework and come back.

City taxpayers contribute $1.2 million a year to the development corporation. In a city with the highest unemployment rate in Canada, it has a critical job. There are few questions that aren’t legitimate.

But what more does Coun. Hilary Payne, who is leading the charge, want? After Pupatello’s presentation, council spent almost two hours questioning her. Payne still has “a lot of really focused questions, I can tell you,” he told council. But he refused to ask them until council debates his motion in April.

He wants more politicians on the development corporation board. There are already politicians on the board: Dilkens and Essex County Warden Tom Bain. Politicians were removed from the board in 2006 because they meddled too much. Then they were reinstated in 2009 to provide accountability. This debate could go on forever.

Is Pupatello a full-time or part-time CEO? That’s a legitimate question, and Payne is the only person asking it publicly. But since he wasn’t asking any questions on Monday, it was the elephant in the room. Pupatello insists she’s full-time. She’s going to send the corporation her overtime bill, she joked.

“I spend a lot of time on Windsor-Essex and economic development,” she said. “We don’t even talk about whether it’s full-time or not.”

She won’t divulge the details of her contract.

She’s also director of business development and global markets at PwC.

“It’s not full-time,” she said.

But she wouldn’t say if it’s part-time, either.

Payne and others are asking, Where are her loyalties? When she’s trying to reel in business, is she working for PwC or Windsor and Essex County?

But here’s a question for Payne. Pupatello was already working for PwC when former Windsor mayor Eddie Francis recruited her for the development corporation. Payne was a councillor at the time. He was still a councillor when she was later also named chairperson of Hydro One and a director at Martinrea International. Was he asking these questions then?

Clearly there are questions. Landing Pupatello and her redoubtable salesmanship and Rolodex was considered a coup. Yet, while Windsor has many assets, it also faces multiple challenges. It’s probably the most difficult sell in Ontario. City and county councils also play a major role in providing amenities that attract business, such as regional transit that Global Sutherland is calling for. The politicians who hand over our money must decide how success should be measured so they and the corporation can be held accountable.

And regardless of the metrics they use, they need to know what’s going on. Pupatello has been CEO of the development corporation for almost two years. She addressed council for the first time in January. Councillors didn’t seem to know much about the corporation Monday. Yet the economy was the top issue in the municipal election.

Dilkens needs to swing into damage control. He’s mayor of Windsor, which pays half the development corporation’s budget. He’s a member of the development corporation board. He needs to ensure those questions are addressed. As he said, we can’t afford to let the reputation of the corporation of Windsor and Essex County be pummelled month after month.